Instant messaging has become a commonly used application on the Internet. Instant messaging programs generally allow users to send and receive text-based messages. One typical shortfall of text-based messages is that they generally lack an emotional aspect. As a result, users sometimes convey their emotions and/or moods to another user by adding emoticons' to a text-based message. Generally, emoticons are icons (e.g. a smiley face) and/or a sequence of characters, typically appearing inline with text (e.g. ;-) (wink)). In some cases, a sequence of characters can be transformed into an icon that represents a similar emotion. In some environments, emoticons can be grouped into an emoticon pool that can allow a user to select emoticons for use in a text-based message.